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McFaddenGavender

I've found information on both sides of the topics, so I'd love to get some thoughts and insights from people here.

Does a DV SSL Certificate have more SEO benefits than a standard SSL certificate?

I understand the "boost" from an SSL is minimal, but is there extra value in the DV? Some have argued that since a DV SSL is "certified", that Google gives it more preference over a standard SSL. While others have argued that a DV SSL is only required for specific types of websites, which is why Google doesn't give them special preference.

Thoughts? Opinions? Proof?

Thanks everyone!

McFaddenGavender

I think an important thing you forgot to mention was how long you have been carrying out your SEO strategy for this client. This is essential to know - high ranking websites do not happen quickly.

Having a keyword in the domain used to be extremely beneficial, but Google has began not factoring it in nearly as much.

McFaddenGavender

There's definitely not going to be a "right" answer to this question, but I think it can lead to a great discussion. We are building a website for a client who has two locations, we are going to use a URL structure similar to this:

www.Brand.com (this would be a landing page where users would select a location)
www.Brand.com/Atlanta
www.Brand.com/Boston

However, we still want to focus on local SEO - so our deeper URL structure will be:

The content on those pages will be unique and target local keywords. Each "version" of the website will have a navigation specific to that location. For example, once a user clicks into the Boston website, all of the navigation items will pertain to Boston.

However, we run into an issue with the blog. Both locations will be using the same blog content, which ends up looking something like this:

This obviously creates duplicate content. We could do something such as this:

www.Brand.com/Blog/Blog-Article

However, as noted above, each local version of the website has a separate navigation (this keeps a user in Boston on the Boston version of the website). So have a centralized blog is far from ideal unless navigations for both locations are included - which would allow users to return back to their local website.

From my understanding, duplicate content doesn't necessarily "hurt" your SERPs, it simply keeps one of the duplicated pages from ranking.

So the question comes down to this, is duplicate content a big enough issue to restructure a website to use a centralized blog?

McFaddenGavender

A client of ours recently received en email from a random SEO "company" claiming they could increase website traffic using a technique known as "search box optimization".

Essentially, they are claiming they can insert a company name into the autocomplete results on Google.

Clearly, this isn't a legitimate service - however, is it a well known technique?

Despite our recommendation to not move forward with it, the client is still very intrigued.

Here is a video of a similar service:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW2Fz6dy1_A

McFaddenGavender

Bill, thanks for the great advice!

McFaddenGavender

We are in the process of building a new website for a client with locations in Tucson and Phoenix. Currently, they have one website that encompasses all locations, however, we are going to build them location specific websites (as many of the services are different between locations).

Now my question is, as far as SEO goes, which one of these options would be the best?

Option 1: Have separate domain names for each location. For example, StevesPetTucson.com and StevesPetPhoenix.com.

_Pros: Easy to target specific, local keywords. Better looking domains. _

_Cons: Splits backlinks between two domains. _

Option 2: Setup StevesPet.com/Phoenix and StevesPet.com/Tucson.

Pros: Keeps all backlinks pointing to one root domain.

Note: We are going to use seperate WordPress installs for both websites, regardless of how we setup the domains. As we will be using different templates, menus and so on, we found this to be the best option.

Thanks for any advice!

McFaddenGavender